Tao Te Ching

“Confucianism preoccupies itself with conventional knowledge... presides over the socially necessary task of forcing the original spontaneity of life into the rigid rules of convention...The individual defines himself and his place in society in terms of the Confucian formulae... a task that involves not only conflict and pain, but also the loss of that peculiar naturalness and un-self-consciousness for which little children are so much loved, and which is sometimes regained by saints and sages.”

— Alan Watts 1915 – 1973 CE